Franziska
by thedutchessai
Summary: When I was 18 years old I promised Roman that I was going to make him alpha of the Russian pack; four years later I did.
1. Prologue

Author's note: I have no idea where this story came from, I started learning Russian and about two weeks later all these ideas for a Roman story came out of me. Actually living in Russia for a summer just made it more intense and I got really attached to these two characters. I've delayed posting this because it's my baby and there aren't really a whole lot of Roman stories out there. I hesitated posting this because I'm not sure it's good enough/ready but I won't know or improve the story unless I put it out there. I'm still continuing my Antonio saga my life just got utterly complicated in every sense of the word. Constructive Criticism is welcome especially if you have some insight into Russian life in the 70s. This is really not 100% historically accurate, but I tried not to be too outrageous. This can be read without reading my other story Mira, even though it works as a prequel if you've already done so.

References for those who are interested:

Franziska: Bianca Balti

Vittorino Agnello: Milo Ventimiglia

Roman Novikov: Daniil Strakhov

**I own nothing except for Franziska ,Vittorino, and other original characters, everything else is property of Kelley Armstrong.**

It was the morning of my wedding; our entire town knew about it and had spent two months in an automated rush preparing for it. The bakers, dress maker, and every last goddamn person on the island was waiting at the church in stiff dress clothes with beads of sweat running down their backs, desperately fanning themselves with our vellum wedding programs. I was in the church rectory in my underwear dodging plates and objects hurled at me by my future mother-in-law. I don't remember lunging at her but it took two groomsmen, a priest and my cousin Lydia to separate us. By the time Vito came in Santuzza had a bloody lip and a few strands of my hair clenched in her fists. The priest had a black eye.

"Macché!"

We both answered back at the same time, it was probably the only thing we had ever agreed on since the day we meet.

"She started it!"

"Albanian whore!"

I don't remember breaking out of my cousin's death grip or feeling my blood roast in my veins. All I knew was that I was determined to rip her fingernails off. I charged and Vito wrapped his arm around my waist.

"Yeah well your grandchildren are coming out of this whore's legs, so you'd better close that fat mouth of your Santuzza."

Right after the last word left my mouth she started crying. I didn't give a shit. Vito ordered her out of the room with an anger I'd only seen once before, his forehead was soaked with sweat and his face flushed red. I was still kicking, still gnashing my teeth, my fists beating against his legs until everyone left the room. It took me twenty minutes to calm down, for my hands to stop shaking long enough to take a sip from Vito's flask.

"I thought they were going to start taking bets."

"Franziska you don't have to do this."

I'd already made up my mind. Vito and I had been friends since I was five years old, but our marriage was just a legal formality. Vittorino Agnello was handsome, intelligent, spoke fluent Greek, Russian, and Albanian and had been accepted to study at Leningrad University in a prestigious Russian literature program. He was tall, funny, perfect, and gay. And I was damaged. We were both leaving for Russia in two weeks. I'd barely finished high school, the only child of an Albanian immigrant who cleaned Vito's family's house and cooked their food. Neither of us would be able to marry other people. I was the only one Vito ever told, the year I turned twelve, with shaking sweaty hands and a queasy stomach. His parents needed a marriage, and we needed each other. No one would marry a slut and Vito would be expected to have grandchildren with a girl from town. So I came to him one night, climbing through his open window and told him I was going to Leningrad as his wife.

"Tell my mom I'm ready to get dressed."

He kissed my cheek and squeezed my shoulder. And then it was layers of silk and brocade. My mother made my dress from gold fabric and a lavender jacket with fabric my cousins brought up from Bari. There was no father. My mother and her maiden name walked me down the aisle.

Our vows weren't fake. When they changed me over from Franziska Dukagjini to Franziska Agnello, I meant every word. People are always quick to accept marriages, blood relations, one-night stands but complete loyalty to someone without a sexual component was an oddity. Vito and I loved each other. We'd put each other before boyfriends, girlfriends, and his mother. The marriage wasn't just a cover, it was the one way that people would respect our decision to live together. A legal way to cement our friendship.

The things I always remembered about our wedding was Vito teaching me dance, his hand on the back of my waist and my head on his shoulder listening to him counting the beats. The sound of us laughing when I stepped on his feet. Until I got it right, and the room was a swirl of color. The wine and the food, the way he joked about how fat his cousins looked in their dresses. The weight of the ring on my finger as we slept side by side still in our wedding clothes and Vito with his shoes on. I listened to our breaths, counted out the beats and danced my fingers across his palm, across our duvet, his tie, my stomach. Danced both of us to sleep humming the last song of the night. Vito's fingers laced with mine, my heels slipping off my feet with a thud. And for the first time I felt I was safe.


	2. Chapter 1

A/N: I realized that I neglected to mention that this story is set in the 1970s. Any constructive criticism, comments, or insight into soviet life in the 70s is welcome! As a side note I had to settle on a lingua franca for Roman and Franziska, I chose Albanian. Although it has far fewer language learners than say Italian, its integral to Franziska's character development and I just couldn't picture her and Roman speaking Italian for the life of me.

If you want a reference for Roman, I suggest the Russian actor Daniil Strakhov. He's the person I pictured when I read _Frostbitten._

**I own nothing except for Franziska and Vittorino. Everything else, including Roman, is property of Kelley Armstrong.**

Glossary:

Po = Yes  
miremengjes Zonjushë = Good morning Miss  
Faleminderit = Thank you

Vito left early for an appointment at his university, leaving behind rumpled sheets and a still warm cup of coffee. He also took all the metro tokens. I dressed in a hurry, red lipstick that I scraped out of the tube with my pinky finger and whatever clothes and shoes I happened to cross paths with.

The line at the ticket window was a nightmare starring old ladies and people with two too many kids pointing sticky fingers at their faces. When it was my turn I swallowed even though my mouth was dry. My Russian was awful because I didn't make any effort. The same way I didn't try to speak Italian until I was five years old. Since we moved here I spent my days wandering, taking the train to the end of the line. Forcing myself to go to an audition for the opera, an audition I'd only gotten through a supernatural connection of Vito's literature professor. I took off in a jog right after the piano played the last note during rehearsals. I left the market, ticketing buying, and any interaction with humans to Vito. But he'd been pushing me. The man behind the window cleared his throat and I just stared at the metal tray under the grate where the person before me had abandoned his receipt.

"Italianskii?"

I was greeted with silence. I raised my eyes to the booth and there was a stern eyebrow raise glaring back at me. He wasn't handsome or sexy that was never a word I'd waste on him. Dark hair and a strong jaw peeked out from the hat of his uniform. He was striking, regal, like he'd been plopped in the wrong century.

"Fuck this, Shqip''

I don't know what made me ask if he spoke Albanian, because I'd spent much of my life up until that point trying to bury it, and the odds of anyone knowing it were slim to none.

"Po, miremengjes Zonjushë "

Yet somehow he'd beaten them. His Albanian wasn't perfect; it was mechanical and rigid, like the spine of a textbook. But I wasn't used to hearing it from foreigners. When I looked at him again, for a second I forgot about the goddamn tickets. His cheek twitched and he took his lower lip into his mouth.

"Zonjushë."

—Roman—

I saw her even in the back of the line drawn in by a flash of coppery red hair cutting through the queue of gray woolen coats. She was a good head taller than most of the people waiting. I crossed my fingers that she would be in my line, silently preparing to ask the teller next to me to stall. I didn't need to. Two windows freed up at the same time with a tinny chime and a brief flashing of lights. She marched right up to mine, grey eyes cautiously flitting up to my face. She wasn't Russian. Her hair was a dark red, long, static charged pieces clinging to a tanned face, and a hard mouth. Red lips, and a crooked nose that didn't quite match. Her speech confirmed it. She had an accent so rudimentary and bizarre that it was jarring.

"Italianskii?"

I was so enthralled by the odd way she pronounced her words that I'd neglected to listen to what she was actually saying. And then she cursed, foul and rough and asked if I spoke Albanian. I bit back a smile. It was fortuitous at best. Of all the ticket sellers in all the metro stations in St. Petersburg waiting with clean starched shirts with millions of tiny paper cuts scarring their fingers and shiny brass buttons providing a distorted image of uniform, clean-shaven expressions. Of brimmed hats shading tight pinched lips. She had chosen the one who spoke Albanian, who had learned it as an ephemeral curiosity because it sounded so musical so unlike any other language he had ever heard.

"Po, miremengjes Zonjushë "

She arched her eyebrows in shock.

"Ten, faleminderit."

I studied her while my fingers counted out the tokens, almost mechanically. The way her mouth twitched as she bit the inside of her cheek in her oversized trench coat. When she paid our fingers both got trapped beneath the acrylic gate long enough for me to feel a static shock.

"Next time, come straight to my window."

She grabbed the tokens and receipt by the fistful and threw them into a canvas shopping bag. I watched her leave and imagined the sound of her shoes clicking on the floor until an impatient customer rapped on my window, snapping me back to reality.


	3. Chapter 3

**First off, a big thank you to everyone that favorited this story! Sorry for the lack of updates but I spent half a year living in and traveling around the former Soviet Union. A good experience but one that ate up all my free time! I own nothing except for Franziska and Vittorino. Everything else, including Roman, is property of Kelley Armstrong. This story is unbetaed, so any mistakes are my own and constructive criticism/suggestions are welcome.**

I went to his window when I ran out of tokens and even when I didn't. Those three-minute interactions were enough for me; he had a way of packing an hour's worth of conversation into mere seconds. The odd sense of humor broke up the monotony of queues, rehearsals, my battle with insomnia. More importantly it was safe. As far as I was concerned he lived inside that booth. He didn't go home at night, didn't take lunch breaks or smoke outside the station. Standing on his line conjured him to that window. He didn't exist without the glass, the receipt printer, and rush hour. I didn't have to worry that smiling or laughing would get me into something I couldn't escape. We danced around each other satisfied with living off crumbs until he decided to change everything.

He started to come watch me sing. I never mentioned I was in the opera, never even let on that I could hum. But one night in the second act I felt something, like someone had struck a match across the back of my neck, and from then on him and his starched uniform stood in the standing room section of all my performances.

I left early one night just in time to catch him running down the front steps trying to beat the crowd. I put my hand on his arm and he turned to look at me. Completely as unsurprised as he was when I came to his booth every Thursday morning.

"Is this your plan, stalking me at work?"

He dripped with something; power, confidence, and something else that made me want to run. It left an acidy feeling in mouth, and I had a primal extinct to fight or flight. He felt like a werewolf. I'd only seen one once, part of a family on the outskirts of a town in southern Italy where Vito's family was from. Werewolves were brutal, nasty and unpredictable, things that anyone who had a vested interest in self-preservation would stay away from. I was burning with fear, and I loved it.

He smirked. "I'm just returning the favor."

I had no idea what my end game was. My dating experience was limited to my married Latin teacher, who I'd started seeing after my 16th birthday. After that there was just a line of thighs that in two years I probably wouldn't even be able to match faces to. There was never this, a sense of anticipation of wanting to strip someone bare straight to the core because of something as trivial as the way the air felt around them.

When I spoke my hand was still on his arm. Frozen at the hinge of his elbow.

"So you're not gonna stop then?"

"Are you?"

I raised my eyebrow and dug into the back pocket of my jeans pulling out the family tickets we got and shoving one into his breast pocket.

"If you're gonna keep stalking me, you should at least have a better view."

He smiled. "Goodnight Franziska."

It wasn't until I was at home and halfway asleep that I realized I never told him my name.

After that there were flowers in my dressing room. Nothing ostentatious no bouquets were ever left. Just orchids. Two, sometimes three, and a note written in Albanian. All slanted capital letters so uniform they looked like they'd been typed onto the paper. No one ever saw the flowers delivered, or a man backstage. But they were always there, waiting for me.

"Aren't you the least bit curious about what he's like?''

Vittorino's lecture was cancelled and he was sprawled out on the dressing room divan flipping the card around between his fingers.

''He's a werewolf Vito.''

He sighed loosening his tie as he spoke. ''That's a race not a personality Franziska.''

''With my luck he's probably some type of freak.''

I took the card from his fingers, and examined it for what had to be the hundredth time. 'Running' into him was one thing but actually having a conversation, not a series of one-liners and half jokes wasn't something I was interested in. I wasn't a flirt or a romantic. I couldn't decide if I was more interested in being chased by him than letting him catch me.

"You gave him open permission to stalk you and we have enough tokens to last the apocalypse. If he was that big of a freak you would've said something by now.''

I rolled my eyes and sighed, tossing a spare coin from my dressing-room table onto Vito's chest.  
"If it's heads you tell me what to write back, otherwise I'll call the whole thing off.''

He threw it up in the air and I heard it land in his palm.

"So is saying you'll be waiting for him naked too much or just enough?"

This time he was waiting for me. He stood when I walked in and I had to grip the door handle to relax. That Plexiglas shield wasn't between us and his uniform was a no-show. There were no street noises like that night outside on the steps when my hand reached into his pocket. He was completely out of context, and I wasn't prepared for it. Without the stiff shadow of his hat brim and the smell of brassy change I barely recognized him.

"No flowers this time?"

My Russian was still terrible; hearing the words come out of my mouth was enough to make me flinch. My accent was getting better, years of singing had turned me into a parakeet, but I couldn't read Cyrillic and there were toddlers with better grammar.

"I thought we'd have dinner, Franziska"

He answered back in Albanian, and I remembered that's what had started this whole thing to begin with. I hated speaking it. Vito's family hated it more. That I was only half Italian, that the other half was something they considered dishonorable. Albanian belonged to a secret side of myself that not even Vito saw. I kept it locked away in the kitchen cupboard next to my mother's porcelain plates with the lilacs painted on them.

"Excuse me?"

"Your name was in the program. Won't you sit?"

"You'd like that wouldn't you."

I took a step toward him ignoring everything in my body. Even the static feeling in my fingers as they got ready to fire off a spell. Because he had only left me orchids and notes, but I was drawn to him. I fell right off the edge that day in my dressing room in a second rate opera house, and I never climbed my way back up again.

"Like what?''

''To tower over me.''

I reached up and touched the hair at the base of his neck. People, humans scared me. Vito always spoke for us while I tried my best to fade away slowly, quietly into his shadow. To hide behind that brilliant man who had been my voice since I was five years old. The mailman, the other students at school, our neighbors down the hall all had me going incognito mode, turning up my coat collar or dashing down the hall so I wouldn't have to talk to them or be recognized.

I lived in fear of small talk and parties. That paranoia didn't extend to supernaturals, because the lines of demarcation were so clear, the hierarchy so well defined. Money, language, family connections, race, none of those things could ever be the understudy for brute strength. We were all ranked by our perceived ability to kill one another, and it was the only social structure I felt comfortable with.

"That's pretty much every werewolve's wet dream isn't it, something quiet and foreign that they can turn into a breeding machine "

He was so quiet that I wasn't sure if he understood me or if that level of Albanian was above his pay grade. But then his mouth twitched just slightly.

''Would it change your opinion about the content of my wet dreams if I sat down instead?''

''Maybe.''

I smiled when I watched him sit, back rigid against the divan. Then I fell into my after-show routine, moving around the room, taking off my makeup. He watched. His eyes had velvet tipped fingers and I could feel them dusting over everything. I turned my back to him while I changed. Opulently embroidered stage costumes were tossed aside, and replaced with a pair of Vito's old jeans and a white silk blouse, the top button one thread away from being missing. Private dressing rooms were a luxury, I'd been stripping in front of more strangers than I could count, but this felt different.

"Don't you want to know what my name is?"

''It's Roman.'' I turned to face him just in time to see the look of surprise on his face. Finding out his name was a sacrifice for me that involved five minutes of conversation with the guy who worked next to him, and three weeks of observation to find out when he had a shift on Roman's day off. It had been almost been worth all of the trouble.

''My coat, Roman.''

He eyed my trench coat with the missing belt suspiciously. But then he picked it up from the arm of the sofa, and walked behind me. I hadn't had a man put my jacket on but I'd seen it too many times to count at the theatre, dodging my co-workers by leaving through the main entrance, waiting in the corridor next to the coat check booth. My arms went out as he helped me into it with all the grace of a gentleman assisting a lady with her mink coat. My face turned red as he fastened the buttons. This one simple gesture felt strangely intimate, and I would never forget it. Because even once he was alpha, even when we fought or the entire Russian pack was in the room, Roman always put on my coat and it always felt like it had that day in my dressing room.

I put on Vito's fedora, not even attempting to remove the rest of my bobby pins, my hair still frizzy from hours of cheap hairspray and old curling irons. He took off his scarf and draped it around my neck his fingers boldly lingering on my collarbone.

"I don't get cold."

"Consider it a gesture for the lack of flowers today."

"You'll need to try harder than that"

He leaned in his lips were almost on my jawline when a tap came through the other side of the door.

"Alright Zika?"

Roman raised an eyebrow.

"Your boyfriend?"

If that was an issue for him he didn't seem at all chagrined. The comment seemed more like a courtesy than an actual question.

"My rape whistle actually, Bene Vito!"

He said nothing but I could see him on the other side of the door, his glasses nestled in his hair and the shoulder of his oversized grey blazer shifting as he laughed.

"I hope you realize most women would run away if you asked them out like this.''

"You don't seem that perturbed by it."

"Because I can take care of myself Roman."

It was more of a promise to myself than a statement. One that I hoped I could keep. For once I was the catalyst, I had initiated these interactions with Roman and I was in complete control of how everything would end. I'd had an equal role in chasing and being chased. I touched him first. I'd undressed. I was the only one in command of my body. I could show him everything or nothing at all. I could push him back down on the sofa and move against him until my legs cramped, or nothing, or a kiss on the cheek, my tongue in his mouth, or a nod and a goodnight Roman.

He smiled. Roman's smiles his laughs were rare in front of other people but not for me. He saved that side of himself. I reached up to slide my fingers beneath his shirt collar and not once did I question any of this or analyze this kinetic pull I felt towards a man I had just met. It had nothing to do with any logical rationale. What I felt for Roman was in my blood. I knew I wasn't normal. That this wasn't normal. Most women, girls my age, would be freaked out at the idea of this but instead of running I kissed him, I wrinkled his shirt collar, felt his hand on my back until we both had to stop.

''Goodnight Roman.''

And I left him there, rubbing the bottom of his lip with his left thumb before the door click closed. Vito and I disappearing onto the sidewalk, my grin killing all of his questions.


End file.
